✵Sonnets✵

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Sonnets

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Have you ever been curious on how to write a sonnet? This post will surely help!

What is a sonnet?

A sonnet is a poem in a specific writing form that originated in Italy. By the thirteenth century it represented a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure.

What is the origin of the word?

The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (from Old Provençal sonet a little poem, from son song, from Latin sonus a sound)

How many different sonnets are there?

The most common sonnet styles are Shakespearean, Spenserian, and the Petrarchan, but there are more uncommon ones out there. In this post I will cover six different sonnet formations.

Which Sonnets are in this blog?

There is;

Shakespearean (English)

Spenserian

Petrarchan (Italian)

Occitan

Urdu

Curtal

Terza Rima

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When writing sonnets, the abcdef formation symbolizes the rhyming of the last word in each line.

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The English/Shakespearean Sonnet

Formation:

ababcdcdefefgg

The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet.

Example;

Shall I compare thee to a summer's (day)?

Thou art more lovely and more (temperate),

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of (May),

And summer's lease hath all too short a (date).

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven (shines),

And often is his gold complexion (dimmed);

And every fair from fair sometime (declines),

By chance, or nature's changing course (untrimmed);

But thy eternal summer shall not (fade),

Nor lose possession of that fair thou (ow'st),

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his (shade),

When in eternal lines to time thou (grow'st),

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can (see),

So long lives this, and this gives life to (thee).

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The Spenserian Sonnet

Formation:

ababbcbccdcdee

The scheme Edmund Spenser chose was adapted from the rhyme model he used in his famous poem "The Faerie Queen" and follows the pattern 'abab bcbc cdcd ee.' Here we have the sonnet divided into three quatrains, or segments of four lines, followed by a rhyming couplet.

Example;

One day I wrote her name upon the (strand)

But came the waves and washed it (away);

Again I wrote it with a second (hand),

But came the tide and made my pains his (prey).

"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain (assay)

A mortal thing so to (immortalize),

For l myself shall like to this (decay),

And elke my name be wiped out (likewise)

"Not so." quod l, "Let baser thing (devise)

To die in dust, but you shall live by (Fame);

My verse your virtues rare shall (eternize)

And in the heavens write your glorious (name),

Where, when as death shall all the world (subdue),

"Our love shall live, and later life (renew)."

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Petrarchan/Italian

Formation:

abbaabbacdecde

abbaabbacdcdcd

The Petrarchan sonnet is a sonnet form not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form divides the poem's 14 lines into two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet.

Example;

Not like the brazen giant of Greek (fame),

With conquering limbs astride from land to (land);

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall (stand)

A mighty woman with a torch, whose (flame)

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her (name)

Mother of (Exiles).

From her beacon-(hand)

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes (command)

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries (she)

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your (poor),

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe (free),

The wretched refuse of your teeming (shore).

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to (me),

I lift my lamp beside the golden (door)!"

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The Occitan Sonnet

Formation:

ababababcdcdcd

The sole confirmed surviving sonnet in the Occitan language is confidently dated to 1284, and is conserved only in troubadour manuscript P, an Italian chansonnier of 1310. It was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon.

Example;

Valiant Lord, king of the Aragonese

to whom honour grows every day closer,

, Lord, the French king

that has come to find you and has left

With his two sons

and that one of Artois;

but they have not dealt a blow with sword or

lance and many barons have left their country:

but a day will come when they will have some to .

Our Lord make yourself a company

in order that you might fear nothing;

that one who would appear to lose might win.

Lord of the land and the sea,

as whom the king of England

and that of Spain are not worth as much,

if you wish to help them.

(This poem was translated from Occitan, it therefore does not rhyme, but it was the only example I could find)

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The Urdu Sonnet

Formation:

babcdcdefefgg

In the Indian subcontinent, sonnets have been written in the Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Sindhi and Urdu languages. Urdu poets, also influenced by English and other European poets, took to writing sonnets in the Urdu language rather late. Azmatullah Khan (1887–1923) is believed to have introduced this format to Urdu literature in the very early part of the 20th century.

Example;

Kuchh is andaaz se dekhaa, kuchh aise taur se (dekhaa)

Ghubaar e aah se de kar jilaa aainaa e dil (ko)

Har ik soorat ko maine khoob dekhaa, ghaur se (dekhaa)

Nazar aaii na woh soorat, mujhe jiskii tamanaa (thii)

Bahut dhoondaa kiyaa gulshan mein, veeraane mein, bastii (mein)

Munnawar shamma e mehar o maah se din raat duniyaa (thii)

Magar chaaron taraf thaa ghup andheraa merii hastii (mein)

Dil e majboor ko majrooh e ulfat kar diyaa (kisne)

Mere ahsaas kii ghahraiion mein hai chubhan gham (kii)

Mitaa kar jism, merii rooh ko apnaa liyaa (kisne)

Jawanii ban gaii aamaajagaah saat e paiham (kii)

Hijaabaat e nazar kaa sisilaa tod aur aa bhii (jaa)

Mujhe ik baar apnaa jalwaa e rangiin dikhaa bhii (jaa).

(This poem is kept in it's original language because you can see the rhyme)

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The Curtal Sonnet

Function:

abcabcdcbdc

abcabcdbcdc

Curtal sonnet, a curtailed or contracted sonnet. It refers specifically to a sonnet of 11 lines rhyming abcabc dcbdc or abcabc dbcdc with the last line a tail, or half a line. The term was used by Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe the form that he used in such poems as “Pied Beauty” and “Peace.” Curtal is now an obsolete word meaning “shortened.”

Example;

Glory be to God for dappled (things) –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded (cow);

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that (swim);

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ (wings);

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and (Clough);

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and (trim).

All things counter, original, spare, (strange);

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows (how?))

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, (dim);

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past (change):

Praise (him).

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The Terza Rima Sonnet

Formation:

ababcbcdcded

Invented by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the late thirteenth century to structure his three-part epic poem, The Divine Comedy. The literal translation of terza rima from Italian is 'third rhyme'. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above are d-e-d, e or d-e-d, e-e. There is no set rhythm for terza rima,

Example;

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's (being),

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves (dead)

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter (fleeing),

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic (red),

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O (thou),

Who chariotest to their dark wintry (bed)

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and (low),

Each like a corpse within its grave, (until)

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall (blow)

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and (fill)

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in (air))